Greetings! I am Mark Brill (The Brillustrator) and I have created this blog as a place to post my sketches, drawings, comics, paintings, paper sculptures and just whatever the hell I happen to be doing!

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Godzilla With Lighthouse Bits

OK, so here was a fun project. My cartoonist group, The C.L.A.W., decided to acquire several landscape paintings from thrift stores and paint monsters into them. We had seen examples of this kind of re-purposing on Facebook and we just thought it would be fun to try it. Above is the one that I did.

It sat at the top of my stairs looking at me reproachfully for several months as I struggled to ignore it. Last night I finally figured I'd better get it off of my plate! I started at about 9:00pm...stupidly. I had no easel, because mine is in storage. Half of my paints were dried up because I haven't painted anything in maybe a year...or more. (I had no blue at all.) The brushes I dug out to use were mostly terrible. Fortunately I found a couple of serviceable ones. The painting itself is about 4 feet tall and 2 and a half feet wide, so it was awkward to prop up and work on without an easel, but I persevered.

All in all, I think it came out pretty well. I spent a bit over 3 hours on it altogether and was finished by 12:30am (slightly past my bedtime)! Since I had no blue I used purple for the reflected light/dorsal spine glow, but I think that worked better. The lighthouse isn't quite as well defined as I had hoped, but it was sort of a nod to Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury who used a giant lizard destroying a lighthouse in one of their legendary collaborations!

Anyway, it was a nice challenge and I'm glad it worked out as well as it did! In fact, I kind of like the end result. A shame I can't keep it. ^0^